in that sweet and peaceful rest

Last night I went to a scenic reading of Daphne DuMaurier's The Birds by Jens Wawrczeck, accompanied by Jan-Peter Pflug playing the theremin, an instrument I have to shamefully admit I had never heard of before I started looking up Mr. Wawrczeck's work outside my childhood fandom. It was really excellent, I highly recommend going to a perfomance if it comes near you and that is a genre you enjoy. Miraculously, I ended up in the first row - there was no seat reservation possible which immediately had me give up all hope of a good seat, but somehow I managed to position myself well in relation to the entrance despite not coming all that early, and it seems a lot of people also don't want to sit in first row actually (I did admittedly have a bit of a neck cramp afterwards, but that was very much worth it. ;-) ) At the end of his scenic readings he always sings something, for us he sang Feed the Birds from Mary Poppins with Mr. Pflug changing to an accordion, which was lovely.

I had brought his book on the off chance there would be an official opportunity to get autographs, but as nothing of the kind was mentioned despite three people holding speeches (two from the theatre, one from a sponsoring bank) before it started I might have just gone straight home unless I had noticed another lady clutching a copy when leaving the auditorium. I lurked about a bit in the foyer among other people lurking and/or having a drink (there is a restaurant attached), and indeed after some minutes spotted him giving autographs - yay! :-) I travelled home clutching my now signed copy of the book to my bossom like a teddy bear. :-D

I have caught myself in quite a bit of hypocracy - I was somewhat annoyed about the cell phones of two ladies beside me keeping going up for yet another photo or video and found it distracting. Someone must have pointed one of them to the sign saying no photographing or filming on the auditiorium entrance in the intermission, because they talked about that, but still did not entirely manage to keep the things in their handbags. But of course, I am myself cheering and pushing the like button when I find photos and videos of all the perfomances I couldn't see online - so where are they supposed to be coming from, self! *glares at self* In fact I found myself searching for a video of him singing Feed the Birds this morning - the only thing I found was this report from a local tv station doing The Birds in another town, which on the one hand has the advantage of being official and me not being hypocrite yet again, but on the other hand is likely geoblocked. But if you are interested, you can also see the theremin in action in it in case I am not the only one previously uneducated about it:




I am having today off, in fact I had Monday and yesterday off, too. I am a bit annoyed with myself that I didn't take the entire week off, I feel quite in need of rest and have vacation days left over from last year. Despite right now nothing urgent is going on at work to my knowledge, I cannot spontaneously take off more days because both boss and boss of boss are absent until Easter (which also is the reason there is likely nothing that urgent) so I don't know who could grant them - funny how the need to there being someone to stand in seems to disappear when higher up in the hierarchy.